


Of Flowers and Obliviousness

by MGNemesi



Category: Batman (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics), Red Hood/Arsenal (Comics), Under the Red Hood
Genre: Courtship, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Getting Together, Happy Ending, Hopeful Ending, Humor, Language of Flowers, M/M, My First AO3 Post, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-17
Updated: 2016-04-17
Packaged: 2018-06-02 20:55:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6581869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MGNemesi/pseuds/MGNemesi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first flower appeared on his desk right after patrol on a Monday.  It was the tulips that did it, though. Saturday’s tulips.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Flowers and Obliviousness

**Author's Note:**

> I haven’t written anything since… 2 years ago. And I’m typing this on tumblr with no spell-check, no beta and countless interruptions, sooooo… *winches* sorry?

**Title:** Of flowers and obliviousness

 **Fandom:** DCU- Batman.

 **Rating:** PG-13.

 **Genre:** Starts humorous, dips very briefly into some angst. Romance abounds. Hopeful ending.

 **Wordcount:** ...I’ll let you know as soon as I do.

 **Characters/Pairings:** JayTim pre-slash, with Dick and Damian watching the ritual courtship of Red birds from the sidelines. A brief cameo by Babs.

 **Warnings:** none.

 **Summary:**   **T** he first flower appeared on his desk right after patrol on a Monday.  It was the tulips that did it, though. Saturday’s tulips. 

* * * * *

 **T** he first flower appeared on his desk right after patrol on a Monday.  
A little thing, its petals a pure white and with a bright yellow core like a gold coin. A chamomile flower, looking very tiny and only a little worse for the wear.   
Tim narrowed his eyes at the sad little bud, throwing aside his gauntlets before reaching out and gingerly poking a petal. It felt soft and a little cold, but dry against the pad of his fingertip.

“Is this your way to tell me I bore you to sleep, Jason?” Tim asked, turning around and holding up the flower pointedly.  
Jason was mid-transition between Red Hood and his civilian self: red helmet sitting next to him on the bench, and the rest of the costume still firmly in place - kevlar, leather, guns, rubber and the green juice of gigantic grass stains. He threw a disarming grin over his shoulder even as he shrugged off his jacket.  
“Ehy now, why did it have to be me? Maybe it got snagged in your cape as we fought off Ivy and fell onto your desk as you walked by, why not?”  
His tone was much too innocent to be believed. Tim rolled his eyes.  
“Knock it off, Jason. Besides, “boring” is not even what the chamomile flower _means_.”  
“ _Exactly,_ ” Damian muttered from somewhere close to the stairway. His face was turned up and away, but the murderous scowl was more than evident in his tone.  
Jason shrugged. Tim threw the flower back onto the desk on his way towards the shower stalls. Dick’s quiet snickering followed him until the sound of water drowned it all.  
  
* * * * *  
**  
**The next night, Tim returned from patrol to find a tiny bunch of forget-me-not sitting prettily on top of his latest report, shiny with water and with some soil still clinging to the translucent spider-webs of their roots.  
“Truly? We didn’t even _fight_  Ivy today!” he hollered, in the general direction of the training mats.  
Jason dropped Damian from a painful-looking headlock, the child landing with a grunt even as Dick collapsed in a fit of inexplicable giggles.  
“Yeah, nope, but Penguin landed in a patch of these earlier tonight, and--”  
“What, they got snagged in your cape?” Tim said so curtly his voice alone could’ve curdled milk.  
Jason wiped the sweat from his forehead and grinned up at him.   
“I’m over that crazy cape phase, but yeah, pretty much,” he shrugged.  
“At they found their way on _my_ desk.”  
Jason’s grin dimmed a bit.   
“Some...how?”  
Tim’s eyebrows was twitching.  
“ _Somehow?_ ”  
Hands raised, eyes wide, grin totally gone now. “Totally accidentally, _I swear_.”  
“I’m sure.”  
“They must’ve-- ah...”  
“Fallen as you walked by?”  
“Could be?”  
Jason rubbed the back of his neck, lips pursed an looking entirely too interested in the bandages wrapped around his knuckles.  
“Jason, I have no idea what you were trying to do, but I have to reprint yesterday’s report go give Bruce!” Tim burst out. “It’s all covered in stains!” He squinted at the flowers. “And this isn’t even a robin’s-egg shade of blue, if that was the joke you were going for!”  
Jason shrugged, picking at the bandages with a sullen pout. At his feet, Damian covered his face with both hands and collapsed backwards with a muffled curse. Dick was still holding a stitch in his side and expelling the occasional titter. Tim snatched the file, threw the flowers back onto the desk and stomped back towards the Batcomputer.  
  
* * * * *  
**W** ednesday, Tim limped into the Cave, waved tiredly to Dick, grunted something unintelligible to Damian and Jason, grabbed a sandwich from a tray Alfred conveniently left near to where Tim would park his bike, slumped dramatically into his chair, and basically face-planted into a small bouquet of sunflowers.  
“Oh, _no_ ,” he muttered to no one in particular. Then louder, towards the part of the Cave currently occupied by the other Robins: “Hey! Are these the flowers Bruce ordered for the Art Exhibit? What are they doing here, do I need to replace the micro transmitters inside or...?”  
A loud curse, and Jason dropped the wrench he was using to tune up his bike. Tim swore he saw him start knocking his forehead against the front wheel. Dick almost fell off the gymnastics rings, laughing so hard he got red in the face. Damian also dropped his own wrench - but in upward trajectory, forcing Tim to duck the hurled projectile or risk a concussion.  
The other Robins were all so strange sometimes.  
  
* * * * *  
**T** hursday it was the turn of a cup of potpourri.  
Jason claimed it was just something left over from a present he’d given Kori, and that he didn’t want it to go to waste.  
Tim eyed the dried rose petals dubiously, secretly pleased with the subtle smell of clove, tea and citrus wafting up from the mix, but confused all the same.  
“Well,” he muttered, putting a few pinches of the mix in his utility belt and pushing the cup back towards Jason. “This will keep insects away, I think. You should keep the rest. Maybe bring some to Babs if you don’t know what to do with it?”  
  
Later that same night, Damian informed him dryly that he'd be in awe of Tim’s torture skills, if they weren’t totally unintentional. Dick could be seen trying to bury his laughter in the sofa cushion - or trying to suffocate himself, it wasn’t very clear from where Tim stood at the kitchen’s door. Jason was _still_  washing off the grime and blood of the fistfight he’d had back at the docks - a particularly gruesome one that had ended with two dozen concussed goons and a broken crane (Do Not Ask).  
Tim filed the whole evening off as lingering after-effect of the hallucinogenic gas from the previous weekend, and left it at that.   
  
* * * * *  
**F** riday started with a phone call and Barbara laughing at him for five full minutes before regaining a measure of composure.  
“Tim,” she said, straining to keep her voice even. “ _Tim_. You can’t be _that_ oblivious.”  
“Oblivious to _what_?” Tim replied, mistrustful mode fully on. Then, panicked: “ _Is he trying to poison me?!_ ”  
A full minute of silence. Tim squirmed in his bed, until Barbara muttered a dry “You _have got to be kidding me_.”  
“Jason’s been acting out of character all week! It’s as reasonable an assumption as any!” Tim snapped, throwing his hands up in the air.  
“Oh, so you _did_ notice.”  
“He left me _flowers_ ,” Tim bit out. “That’s not in his M.O.”  
“So you noticed _that,_ too.”  
“They were all over my desk!”  
“Yes. Flowers. On your desk. What’s keeping you from making the last connection?”  
“ _What_ connection? Is he crazy again? Is it the pit?” A pause. “Am I dying?”  
“Ridiculous is what you are.” She said pointedly. “Stop hiding being this willful blindness and _think about it_ , Tim. You’re not dumb enough or cruel enough to leave him hanging. Besides, he deserves better.”  
She disconnected the call, leaving Tim to grouse about this and that all the way down to the Cave. He reached his workstation and stopped short.  
There was a flower pot on his desk.  
With a bow tied around it.  
A _red_ bow.  
And a cactus inside.  
Which---looked to be flowering, too.  
Tim turned tail and slipped back into the sacred protection of his blankets. Jason was just trying to get him to face-plant in the Cactus the same way he had face-planted in the sunflowers the day before. Sure. Right.  
  
* * * * *  
**I** t was the tulips that did it. Saturday’s tulips.  
Or rather, the explosion. But 90% the tulips. Well, 74%. A good 60% at the very least.  
Tim left Cave with ashes in his hair and soot all over his face, deep dark smudges of it cutting down his face like inky tear-tracks. He’d abandoned the uniform somewhere in the Cave, somewhere... in the bend right before the stairway, maybe... next to that alcove where Pennyworth the cat sometimes went to hide or... or somewhere closer to the Med-Bay, perhaps...? The Med-Bay, where Jason was lying, unconscious, burn salve and bandages all across his torso, his forearms, his legs, a necklace of deep red scratches around the base of his neck, nicks and abrasions all over the side of his face, where his helmet had been hit and shattered, exploding like an incandescent bulb.  
Tim pushed the door of his room open and-- and it was the tulips that did it, truly, it was. The tulips scattered everywhere in his room, in vases, in bunches, on his bed and on his floor, tulips that meant perfect love, like the dry roses in the glass cup had meant passionate love, and the forget-me-nots had meant growing affection, and the sunflower adoration and loyalty, and the chamomile being patient and letting go of the pain.  
Tim collapsed on his bed with a noise that was only barely human, hiding his face and trying hard not to think that Jason might not make it, and that the forever he’d been trying to promise to an evasive Tim might never - ever- come to be.  
  
Not ever.  
  
Not ever.  
  
Not... ev... e...r.................  
  
Tim woke up from a fitful sleep several hours later, rolled in the blankets like the human equivalent of a burrito. And with a hard weight pressing his whole body deeper into the mattress.  
“t’was a pain t’ find you, you li’l bird,” Jason muttered from somewhere above and beyond the darkness protecting Tim. He squirmed around, Tim squirming right along with him until his face poked out of the blankets, coming nose to nose with Jason.  
“I was in my room, how was I hard to find?” Tim muttered, embarrassed in equal parts by the burn in his eyes and the warmth in his cheek and the dryness of his throat. He licked his lips, trying to will his heart to slow down and his head to stop buzzing, buzzing, buzz.  
Jason smirked down at him. There was a cut at the corner of his mouth, a teardrop of blood hiding in his dimple. His smile was lazy and a touch mean, but his eyes were clear and warm, and maybe just a little sad.  
“’s hard t’ climb 156 steps, ‘s what’s _hard,_ ” he said with no rebuke. Tim lowered his head, going to hide in the hollow of Jason’s throat.  
“You ‘kay, li’l bird?”  
“I just--”  
“Yeah?”  
“I don’t... don’t want to--”  
"Be found?”  
“--to lose you.” Tim’s fingers curled into Jason’s shirt, kneading, pulling them closer somehow. He noticed Jason tensing, holding his breath for a long minute and then releasing it slowly, softly; expelling a noise like the long, winding sigh of a gentle wind ruffling the fallen leaves.  
“Are you done pretending, then?”  
Tim shrugged, a small thing.  
“I didn’t catch on immediately, I mean... how could I expect the Red Hood to...” he paused, squirmed, eyes darting around and cheeks darkening, “...woo me with flowers?”  
“I’ll have you kno’ th’ Red ‘ood ‘s plenty _romantic_.”  
Tim snorted.  
“The scourge of the Underworld. And he’s a sappy one. Bodice-rippers levels of _sappy_.”  
“An’ proud ‘f it, too.”  
“And a nerd. Who knows the flower language.”  
“A’ you’r scar’d t’ lose him.” Jason nudged him softly until Tim glanced up and into his eyes. “You’r scar’d to lose _me_.” Somehow, it felt like there was not enough air in the room anymore.  
“I do.”  
“Tim--”  
“No, hush,” he bit out, embarrassed at feeling so vulnerable, and angry at being embarrassed. He pushed Jason off of him and nudged him slowly but relentlessly to lie onto his back. “ I know it doesn’t make sense -- I know not having you is not the answer to--to the fear of--- just not now, okay? Not  _now_.”  
He settled down, using Jason’s body as a mattress and his chest as a pillow. He tried not to stretch into the hand that started caressing his back, but it was a losing battle.  
“You have me, though,” he felt Jason murmur into his hair. “You have me.”  
Tim sighed, closing his eyes, realizing that yeah, fear or no fear, he had Jason.  
  
And Jason had him.  



End file.
